Here are the results from the group poll of the Cycling East / Silk Road WhatsApp group, conducted in October/November 2025.
A total of 85 members participated. This is about 11% of all members and about 40% of all active members (those that wrote a message between 15th June and 15th November).

Many participants supplied their rough locations. A map of these can be seen here.
Further, some useful route maps, with info for road conditions etc. made by the participants are gathered here.

This survey was designed, prepared, conducted and evaluated under the aegis of Cycling East group admin Felix Puff (@radelix_and_rebikkey on Instagram)!
It is not the work of Belinda and Tizian from Zweiradler-Touren, we merely provided the webspace to publish the results.

For the results from other years, see here.

Contents

• Results Participant Demographics
• Results Kilometers & Days
• Results Planning Phase
• Results Bike
• Results Bags, Lugagge & Other Equipment
• Results Maintenance & Repairs
• Results Accommodation
• Results Food
• Results Finances
• Results Motivation & Travel Style
• Results Messages & Members

How much do bike travellers spend on average?

Monthly spending varies widely, but most people spend between 400 and 800 €/month, with an average of 681 €/month. Note: These expenses include all costs related to travelling (food, accommodation, insurance, visa, transport costs etc.), and exclude non-travel related costs (rent back home, other fix-costs from back home, donations etc.).

Most people do not have any income while on the road and live of their savings. Only some work a little or work while travelling and can fully finance themselves.

What influences spending of bike travellers the most?

How often participants stayed in paid accommodation alone explains around 28% of the differences we see in spending. This means for example: If one participant spends much more than another, accommodation choices alone explain about one quarter of that gap. This is way higher than what other variables explain (Country of origin: 7%, Group type: 4%, Trip length: 4%, Age: 2%).

This table is intended to give future travellers a perspective in how much they likely spend per month.

It summarizes average per person spendings by different groups. As predicted based on our samplesize of 85 bike travellers. It can be wrong, but your spending likely lies within the margin of thiese values.

Note that the frequency of paid accomodations has the most influence on average spending by far.

Note: As only two participants were aged >45 we did not try to do predictions for older age groups, as these would be based on a too small sample size.

The frequency of sleeping in paid accommodations has the strongest effect on a person’s budget. Every level of frequency spends about 26% more than the previous level.

Especially people who have been on the road for already longer than a year spend less. There is no person who travelled for longer than a year and spend more than 800 €/month (except for our outlier who spends 2500 €).

Solo males are bigger spenders than other group types. But it is not such a strong factor as the frequency of paid accommodations. There is a big variation in spending also within every group type.

Swiss, Brits, Dutch and N Americans spend more than others, spending about 900 €/month on average. Germans, French and Italians are our cheapest travelers, all spending about 500 €/month on average.

Older bike travelers spend slightly more, but the influence of age on spending is the weakest out of all variables analyzed.

Contents:

• Results Participant Demographics
• Results Kilometers & Days
• Results Planning Phase
• Results Bike
• Results Bags, Lugagge & Other Equipment
• Results Maintenance & Repairs
• Results Accommodation
• Results Food
• Results Finances
• Results Motivation & Travel Style
• Results Messages & Members